Delhi Metro's Magenta Line to be inaugurated today: 5 reasons why it's special

NEW DELHI: Ending months of wait, the direct metro line connecting Gurugram to Noida will begin from Monday. The Janakpuri West-Kalkaji Mandir Metro corridor of Delhi Metro's Magenta Line will bring the travel time between Noida and Gurugram by nearly 30 minutes. The stretch will also bring the domestic terminal of the city airport on the DMRC network. 

The 24.82-km-long corridor will be flagged off by Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs (Independent Charge) Hardeep Singh Puri and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal at 4.30 pm from the Nehru Enclave Metro station. The dignitaries will then ride the metro and travel to Hauz Khas station.

The metro operations on this line will begin for the public from 6 AM on Tuesday from the Kalkaji Mandir and Janakpuri West stations simultaneously. 

While passengers wait to ride in this line, here are 5 reasons which make this new corridor extra special:

- With the inauguration of this line, two new interchange facilities will be available. The stations with the interchange facilities are Janakpuri West (with the Dwarka - NOIDA/ Vaishali Blue Line) and Hauz Khas (with the HUDA City Centre - Samaypur Badli Yellow line). This is likely to reduce the footfall on Rajiv Chowk Metro station by a huge margin.

- The five-level new Hauz Khas station is the deepest metro station in the entire network. At 29 metres, the station is an engineering landmark as its tunnel goes beneath that of the old stations.

- This section of the Delhi Metro is the longest stretch to have been opened so far in the DMRC's Phase-III project. It will have 16 stations - 14 underground, two elevated. 

- With the inauguration of this stretch, Terminal 1 of the IGI Airport will be connected to the metro network.

- The Magenta Line is likely to projected as the a 'Knowledge Corridor' as four major universities of the Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), have been connected on it. The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) are the institutions which will get metro connectivity with the opening of the new corridor and Jamia Milia Islamia University in south Delhi and Amity University in Noida have already got metro connectivity with the opening of the Botanical Garden-Kalkaji Mandir section in December 2017. 

The stations on this corridor are: Janakpuri West, Dabri Mor, Dashrathpuri, Palam, Sadar Bazar, Terminal 1 - IGI Airport, Shankar Vihar, Vasant Vihar, Munirka, RK Puram, Hauz Khas, IIT, Panchsheel Park, Chirag Delhi, GK Enclave, Nehru Enclave.